The Esquivel family were evicted Thursday from their home in Roslindale. That same morning they had gone to the Boston Municipal Court in a last effort to stop the eviction. The judge did not rule in their favor. Raul and Anna Esquivel came back from court, tears streaming for their face, to find about 10 police officers on and around their property and another 40 people protesting the eviction. The picket was lively and emotional. Around forty people came out to support the Esquivels. The blockade was called by City Life/Urbana, and supported by many community groups, including Dorchester People for Peace, SEIU 615, the Boston No Eviction Network, the Boston Workers Alliance and others. At one point it appeared that the eviction was going to be called off. To this news, Anna Esquivel danced and people cheered. Yet about 30 minutes later, there was another call saying the eviction was in fact going to take place that same day at 2:30 pm.

There so many things that are wrong with this, first that the Esquivel family had tried in vain to negotiate with Deutsche Bank: they had offered to pay rent, other family members had offered to purchase the house at the appraised market value. This is a reoccurring phenomenon: the banks are not negotiating with families in foreclosed properties, instead they kick families onto the street and have empty buildings because then this, nominally will not be considered a loss. Not a loss for whom and to what expense, I ask myself. Families are being thrown out, displaced; communities are being destroyed so that a bank won't call it a loss?! Adding to the injustice: just a day before this eviction, Bush proposed a $700B bail out for the banks. This would be the largest transfer of money in all of history. One of the arrestees defending the Esquivel's home pointed out that in Boston it has been working class people of color who are being evicted from their homes while white business men are being bailed out. One thing is for sure, these men will sleep comfortable tonightt, and may even be able to choose among several houses in which to sleep.

At about 3:00 pm the constable and a moving truck came to remove the Esquivel's belongings. The family only had time to throw their things in trash bags and get out. They were crying, the grandchildren screaming. As the constable tried to walk up the stairway to deliver the eviction notice, the protesters surrounded him, shouting "shame!" Police moved in immediately, four people were arrested - taken away in police vans.

Yesterday a beautiful home in Roslindale was standing empty, and the Esquivel family were left wondering where they were going to sleep. Ana said they were going to look for a place in a shelter. The fact that the Esquivel family was evicted from their home is despicable. Those being bailed out are the same who implemented the policies that are having devastating economic effects for the majority of the population. As this sham government spends billions on war and occupation and bails out big financial institutions, it is working class and immigrant families that are paying the bill. We must not become resigned in the face of this crisis. We need to come out again and again to show these greedy banks that we will not be moved without a fight. As Ana Esquivel said, "This is still a victory because we will continue to fight together!"

Comments

This is what I have been watching the wires for, a report revealing the 21st. century Hooverville. As long ago as four years I was a warning everyone who would listen that there was the worst economic crisis in a generation coming. The reason I said this is because I saw the suits do this once before.

In the 1980's the Reagan/Bush crime syndicate created an artificial increase in the price of real estate causing an entire generation to consider selling and then selling off homes that had already been paid off or had been close to being paid off fueling a self perpetuating machine that increased the price of real estate far beyond what was reasonable for the working-class and middle-class to pay for rent or mortgage. And when the American public including investors and deregulated S & L speculators finished dumping the nation's capital into real estate and the real estate market became saturated with too much new and existing product, there came a point when the nation had bought as much real estate as it could. All of sudden the radically increasing cash flow that made Reagan look like an economic genius came to an end and the entire house of cards the Reagan built collapsed into over 15 million people becoming homeless.

This housing bubble we're watching collapse before our very eyes is exactly the same scam except on a much grander scale in part because of the deregulated banking sector where banks could gamble depositor money more freely in speculative instruments called investor backed mortgage securities traded on the stock market, but the more important part of why this economic collapse will be worse than even the Great Depression is as a result of Bill Clinton signing the NAFTA agreement. Draining the nation of high-paying jobs that the original free-trade agreement stole from Canada which NAFTA then moved to the Third World slave wage states like Mexico and China along with millions of domestic American jobs that helped build the middle-class to what was before the Reagan/Bush crime syndicate began to reverse the prosperity of the American people.

One of the more interesting additions to this nightmare created by the suits in Washington and on Wall Street and why this collapse will be far more intense, is the addition to the speculative real estate market in the U.S. by the international banking community which greatly expanded and sped up the inevitable saturation of the market. With not just America's money locked up in real estate with no where to go but now because Banks and investors from all round the world invested in this Ponzi scam it is going to become harder for central banks in all nations to sell Treasury securities like the U.S. has just done to bail the insurance giant company AIG. The more Treasury bonds the central bank's of nations around the world sell the value of the currency's of those nations against the price of goods will fall making matters even worse.

I am predicting that 30 million people will be made homeless while millions of homes sit empty just in the U.S. alone. Who knows what the numbers will be worldwide. What greater symbolic evidence does one need to have placed in front of them than the stark contrast of the world's wealthiest 10 percent living in a giant mansions while the people who created the wealth that put the world's wealthy in those mansions live in homeless camps all around the world.

As many among us end up homeless as a result of lawlessness and fascism of the monopolistic markets, it's not just regulation the economy and the environment needs, it's democracy. The democratic distribution of wealth to not just human beings but to the planet and all the planet encompasses.

It is my position that the first place we must start is with debt forgiveness right across the board and not just for the investment banking community that contributed the most to the Bush crime family syndicate's election coffers.

All mortgages, all credit cards, all business and personal loans, every form of debt must be forgiven and the homeless given full and complete ownership without debt or strings attached of the empty houses that are foreclosed on or are sitting empty because they're not selling. And while this debt forgiveness is occurring all elections in the U.S. must be brought up to international standards in order to guarantee that a democratic outcome occurs after every election. From this place and this place only there may be an opportunity to begin to turn things around. Otherwise?

At this moment, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are trying to get Congress to accept “an unclear and complicated plan” to give $700 billion taxpayer dollars to some of the same banks and investment institutions that brought America to the brink of depression. Millions of Americans are now at risk of losing their jobs, homes, even their future.

How can Americans possibly trust this Congress to protect $700 billion in Taxpayer Dollars that is needed to Restore US credit liquidity from being misappropriated? Consider: the U.S. Government still has no clear explanation how over $8 billion dollars of Iraq Oil Revenues disappeared from its U.S. Government bank account, revenues earmarked for rebuilding Iraq’s infra structure. The U.S. Government allowed hundreds of accounting irregularities to continue until the $8 billion was gone. The disappearance of the $billions was discovered by a charitable organization. For years the U.S. Government did nothing to set up a transparent financial management system to account for Iraq's oil revenues. Since the U.S. occupation, oil tankers and trucks in Iraq have been allowed to ship oil without flow meter monitoring making it impossible for U.S. Government to track or determine how much oil was sold abroad or in Iraq, a heyday for thieves. Oil flow monitoring systems are not complicated and relatively easy to install. Now just imagine this U.S. Congress trying to monitor $700 Billion in “bailout money” left totally to the control of a few government people to pick and choose which private businesses get cash. Does that sound a bit like Fannie Mae? Determining which companies get government cash handouts could quickly become political as it did in Germany during the 1930’s. Germans business that followed the Nazi line got a lot of help from Hitler. Those that didn’t—or did not pay off the right Nazis, perished.

Trust Congress? Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke appear intended to give part of the $700 billion taxpayer bailout money to some of the same banks and investment institutions that helped cause our current financial crisis.
Unless these U.S. Taxpayer funds are closely monitored and extremely protected, Americans should expect that the same reckless policies and possibly criminals that caused this financial crisis will move quickly to gain access to taxpayers’ bailout money, for example: (1) exploiting lack of U.S. Government oversight to manipulate or control where bailout money is spent—perhaps even bribing government officials to give a particular company or institution “bailout money”; example: (2) exploit current corruption in U.S. government and lack of Government oversight to buy from Government real estate and corporate assets below fair market value that the Government holds in trust during this financial crisis. Example: look what happened to American Indians’ U.s. Government held assets that disappeared; (3) It should be expected some of the same corrupt participants that caused this financial mess will immediately seek employment with new U.S. Government agencies established to dispose of millions of toxic loans and real estate assets the U.S. Government takes over from lending institutions and other entities. Americans must ensure their taxpayer assets are openly marketed and sold at fair market value, that all investors have equal opportunity to buy real estate and other assets being sold by the U.S. Government: that insider sales of assets are prosecuted.

Currently millions of Americans continue to see the value of their homes collapse in value while loans against their property exceed the price a homeowner can sell their property. Declining property values in states like Nevada, Harry Reid’s state, have proven especially damaging to homeowners with “recourse mortgages” because institutional lenders can attach the subsequent income and assets of foreclosed homeowners to recover “lender losses” not recovered by foreclosure. Should it have been foreseeable by some institutional lenders in Nevada and other states their continued writing of sub-prime mortgages in communities experiencing a high rate of loan defaults and foreclosures would further undermine the home values of their previous mortgage borrowers, reduce their previous borrowers’ ability to sell their homes and repay the lender? Perhaps nationally, lenders should be required to disclose to prospective borrowers the current default and foreclosure rate of homes in the neighborhoods a lender is soliciting to make home loans.

Institutional Lenders, brokers and others legally found to have knowingly sold mortgage backed loan securities made in neighborhoods that they or others undermined in real estate value by writing large numbers of sub-prime mortgages and had actual knowledge of a high rate of defaults and foreclosures, should perhaps be arrested for fraud if proper disclosure of those facts was not made to their purchasers of mortgaged back securities. Possibly such business practices by institutional lenders may constitute “standing” for a homeowner class action lawsuit to stop institutional lenders from pursuing collections on “recourse mortgages” in Nevada and might stop lenders raising (ARM) adjustable rate mortgage interest rates nationally.

Is Jail Enough Punishment for lenders, brokers and others if they knowingly sold or facilitated the sale of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities: sold securities they knew were backed by “INFLATED real estate appraisals; had knowledge home loans they were selling to pension funds and other entities were made to un-qualified buyers likely to default, a fact they did not disclose.

The U.S. Justice Department should make a strong effort to forfeit the ill-gotten gains of lenders, their executives, anyone that is criminally or civilly proven to have defrauded home loan borrowers or purchasers of mortgage-backed securities.